Various surgical procedures are routinely carried out intravascularly or intraluminally. For example, in the treatment of vascular disease, such as arteriosclerosis, it is a common practice to invade the artery and insert an instrument (e.g., a balloon or other type of catheter) to carry out a procedure within the artery. Such procedures usually involve the percutaneous puncture of the vessel so that an insertion sheath can be placed in the vessel and thereafter instruments (e.g., catheters) can pass through the sheath and to an operative position within the vessel. Intravascular and intraluminal procedures unavoidably present the problem of stopping the bleeding at the percutaneous puncture after the procedure has been completed and after the instruments (and any insertion sheaths used therewith) have been removed. Bleeding from puncture sites, particularly in the case of femoral arterial punctures, is typically stopped by utilizing vascular closure devices, such as those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,090,130 and 6,045,569,which are hereby incorporated in their entireties by this reference.
Typical closure devices such as the ones described in the above-mentioned patents place a sealing pad at the tissue puncture site. Deployment of the sealing pad may include manually ejecting the sealing pad from within a device sheath and compacting the sealing pad against an outer surface of the tissue puncture using a positioning member. The compacting procedure may begin after the device sheath (within which the positioning member may be located) has been removed. The construction of the sealing pad itself may require a predetermined amount of compaction force and a certain suture path through the sealing pad in order to avoid only a partial seal and associated late bleeding from the tissue puncture. Accordingly, there is a need for improving intravascular and intraluminal procedures and devices.